This study investigated phase transitions in EFL students' speech fluency development using a complex dynamic systems perspective. Two students with different proficiency levels were selected from an intact speaking class. These students learned and practiced specific strategies to improve their speech fluency. Phase transitions were analyzed…

Language repertoires have been traditionally construed as a set of chronologically determined compartments (first language, second language, etc.), a scheme which upholds several validity and ethical issues when operationalized in research and education (Ortega, 2019). Complex dynamic systems theory (also complexity theory, here CDST) has been…

Previous literature has shown that voicing contrast is a difficult feature for Chinese-English emergent bilingual learners of L3 Spanish (Bravo Diaz, 2020; Chen, 2007; Zhang, 2022). The production of voicing contrast in stops has been broadly investigated in second and third language studies (e.g., Zampini, 1998; Llama, 2010; Wrembel, 2014), but…

Research investigating L2 (second language) willingness to communicate (WTC) has gained ground in the past two decades. Added to that is the emergence of complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) with a focus on the phenomenon of change, the implications of which for WTC research have opened up new avenues to enhance our conceptualization of the…

Despite evidence on the interaction between cognitive individual differences (IDs) and task complexity, our knowledge of how affective IDs, such as foreign language enjoyment (FLE), interact with task complexity and other factors is limited. Since tasks and activities were found by Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014) to be most relevant to FLE, and since…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) research has recently witnessed a paradigm shift with the more recent studies looking at the shifting and dynamic nature of the variable. A growing body of literature has interpreted such dynamicity from a complex dynamic systems (CDS) perspective. The theory of CDS has four basic properties, one of which, and the…

One of the most recent developments in the field of L2 motivation is the construct of Directed Motivational Currents (DMCs). This novel motivational conceptualisation is characterised by its energising capacity to promote and sustain action in a multitude of contexts whenever an individual is determined to attain a goal/vision he or she regards as…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) has recently been researched as a dynamic variable, with some investigations viewing it as a complex dynamic system (CDS). One important property associated with CDS is the notion of attractor states, which are characterized by stable patterns of behavior. The present study employed an idiodynamic method to monitor…

The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend previous findings on spontaneous movement and rhythmic engagement with music in infancy. Using the identical stimuli and procedures from the original study, I investigated spontaneous rhythmic movements in response to music, infant-directed speech, and contrasting rhythmic patterns in 30…

Language serves many functions for humans, but three of the most important are coordination, learning, and friendship. All of those functions were well served by the conversations from which this special issue emerged, a conference, "Grounding language in perception and (inter) action", held at Gordon College in June 2009. The conference brought…

This research developed a multimodal picture-word task for assessing the influence of visual speech on phonological processing by 100 children between 4 and 14 years of age. We assessed how manipulation of seemingly to-be-ignored auditory (A) and audiovisual (AV) phonological distractors affected picture naming without participants consciously…

The child's development of productive control over the adults language system is seen as an outcome of the dynamic social discourse of parent and child. Traditional approaches to child language are reviewed and a dialectical analysis is developed using concepts from information theory and a general systems approach. (JMB)

The mind as organization metaphor asserts an optimistic and multi-faceted foundation for the examination of intrapersonal communication. Definitions of intrapersonal communication have not been developed without debate and controversy. As with many other ambiguous terms and definitions in the field of communication, an operational definition of…

A conceptual model of the rhetorical community that addresses the sociodramatic processes through which social order evolves, is maintained, can change, and is threatened is presented in this paper. Following an introduction, the paper identifies the various uses of rhetorical vision and rhetorical community that are found in fantasy theme…

Explores the nature and functions of conflict, its role in fundamental individual and social life processes, and its theoretical relationship to communication from a system-theoretic perspective. Indicates a distinction between conflict and para-conflict, and suggests that the latter is characteristically the object of study in speech and…